Before the two-level Target opened its doors, before the Metro station began picking up and dropping off passengers on the next block, before the new tenants moved into the freshly painted condominiums and lofts, a tiny plot of land existed on 14th street and Columbia. More than a decade later, it remains here still.

More than a decade earlier, it was on the cusp of being transformed.

The tiny plot of land at CentroNia, a community center in Columbia Heights, brought together Lola Bloom and Rebecca Lemos. First as high school students volunteering after school at CentroNia, then as colleagues learning to garden in the same plot of land, later as confidantes – and ultimately as partners in their non-profit organization.

Before Bloom and Lemos entered the picture, children at CentroNia used the parcel of land out front as a play area. A one-time summer program turned it into a garden, but that didn’t really go anywhere when the outside group that started the garden didn’t return. Employees at CentroNia asked Bloom and Lemos to do something about the plot of land. Neither had any idea what to do with it.

“I just remember I was walking around in circles like, what am I going to do here?” Bloom says. “And there was a lot of trash and a lot of beer bottles. There was weird stuff I was digging up all the time. And I was like, ‘OK, let’s get the kids out,’ and the kids where all over the place because I didn’t know what to tell them to do, and it was a little chaotic.”

More than a decade later, Bloom is using that same parcel of land to teach gardening classes at D.C. Bilingual Public Charter school, which is operated out of CentroNia.

Sitting in the teacher’s lounge in the basement, Bloom doesn’t get much of a break. Children pop their heads into the lounge to say “hi” or ask her a question. Like a mom used to having her kids interrupt “adult” conversations, she answers patiently.

The mostly self-taught gardener is wearing blue jeans, sneakers and a worn-out gray hoodie under an apron that could pass for a springtime dress. It reaches to her knees and it is printed with yellow and pink flowers. Bloom’s maple-brown wavy hair is parted in two lose buns at the nape of her neck. Sometimes she rest her long fingers on her temples thinking, such as when she reminisces about the growing pains of evolving from an amateur to an experienced gardener. Her metallic blue nail polish is starting to chip at the tips.

Her first summer working on the garden, Bloom says, she planted lots of marigolds. According to Bloom, that’s the only plant she really knew about. Bloom says her father drove her to The Home Depot where she bought 20 marigolds and planted them, in addition to some sunflowers and petunias.

“I did not know what I was doing. I put everything out there, directly on the soil. No mulching, watered it a bit and hoped for the best.”

Similar to Bloom, Lemos admits she went into gardening knowing nothing about it. Lemos is squatted on top a blue classroom chair in the computer lab at CentroNia. Her navy blue sunglasses don’t last long on top of her head. She pulls them off and plays around with them while shifting her legs from under her, first tucking them under, then crossing them.

Lemos compares her first gardening experience to her first kiss: She doesn’t remember either one. But after getting her first taste of gardening, she says, she remembers getting “ridiculously hooked” on it.

Lemos says she became so enamored with gardening that, since she couldn’t drive a car yet, she used a folding shopping cart to take three bags of manure she bought at a hardware store to the garden. For several blocks, Lemos pushed the cart from Adams Morgan to Columbia Heights.

“So [the bags] smell bad, kind of ripping out a bit. I’m trying to maneuver it [the cart] around the sidewalks just to get these bags of manure to this little plot of garden,” Lemos says.

Through trial and error, they got the hang of . The activity they enjoyed during their time off from high school and later college turned serious. Bloom says the summer before graduating college, the two had a meeting and decided to team up instead of alternating their work on the garden during the summertime. According to Bloom they asked themselves, why not make gardening their lifestyle? Why not make gardening their full-time jobs?

Both women got their hands on gardening books and participated in workshops. In 2003, they considered formalizing their gardening work as a non-profit and in 2004 they carved out a mission statement. Three yeas later, they officially founded City Blossoms. So far, they’ve grown eight gardens in Columbia Heights, Takoma Park and Baltimore. Their newest gardening project is located in the Shaw Neighborhood in NW D.C.

Bloom and Lemos took on community gardening before its recent resurgence across the country. According to the American Community Garden Association, there are between 18,000 to 20,000 community gardens nationwide and the number is rising.

However, when the pair experimented with gardening in the late 1990s, other area groups were already engaging in community gardening in D.C., according to Judy Tiger, the former executive director of Garden Resources of Washington (GROW).

“What makes them stand apart is they way they integrate hands-on gardening, education and art. I don’t know anyone else doing that [in D.C.]. That makes them real special,” says Tiger, whose non-profit helped start and fund community greening projects for more than a decade. Lemos and Bloom both credit Tiger for teaching them the fundamentals of organic gardening.

“They really put the children right in the center,” Tiger says about Bloom’s and Lemos’ approach to gardening. According to Tiger, combining hands-on gardening and hands-on art motivates the children to learn.

“They don’t do classic standard community garden. They are pioneers in that regard,” says Katie Rehwaldt, with the national non-profit, America The Beautiful Fund. Rehwaldt also sits on City Blossoms’ board of directors.

Rehwaldt says that using art in the garden sparks the children’s creativity and gardening can be used as a tool to facilitate learning in different academic subjects.

Bloom studied art in college and incorporates it into the curriculum she develops for the gardening projects. For one of her classes, Bloom had her pre-kindergarten students read the children’s book, “Planting a Rainbow,” which is about a mother teaching her child how to grow flowers in a garden. The students drew their own flowers as pages for the book. The students worked on their literacy skills while learning about gardening, Bloom says.

Lemos is also trained as an art teacher Lemos says that at first it can be a battle to get the children to feel comfortable in the garden because they tend to complain about the “icky” factor of putting their hands in the soil and getting dirty.

However, she says, “If you get rid of that and if you are willing to explore getting a little dirty that means you’re more willing to explore, more willing to experiment, take in your environment and do and touch and experiment, which in turn leads to creative thought process.”

The gardening work Bloom and Lemos perform in Columbia Heights also confronts a reality of this neighborhood – crime. Bloom says when they started the first garden, she viewed it as a peace-building tool that provided children with a safe outdoor space.

“I could never say planting a seed stops a bullet because that’s not true and never will be,” Bloom says. “But I think it’s just a matter of getting kids to think in more peaceful ways and how to interact with each other in more peaceful ways.”

Overtime, as their interest in gardening intensified, so did Lemos’ and Bloom’s friendship. Initially, Bloom admits, there was some tension.

“Rebecca goes to art school, so do I. Rebecca studies abroad, so do I. Rebecca does this, so do I,” Bloom says in a taunting voice. “Everyone was always like, you should be friends with Rebecca and I was like, screw this!”

Lemos says this is a constant in their friendship, “How do we keep our individuality when those arounds us want to compare? I even made t-shirts that said ‘Robola and Lobeca’ because it was the joke that were were interchangeable.”

For Lemos, the initial tension was more about learning to share a plot of land that they both had fallen in love with individually, and both felt very protective of.

But the more they worked together, Bloom says they just clicked.

Lemos agrees.

“This is what I imagine marriage to be like.” She adds, “It’s a very nice balance between the two of us. I hope marriage is like that because it’s not so bad if it’s like that.”

Bloom looks at their partnership as an example of women working well together.

“I think that’s what great about what she and I do. It’s walking the talk. You know, women can join forces and it doesn’t have to be my nonprofit versus your nonprofit and my goals versus your goals. We can take advantage of each other’s strengths and make each other rise up together.”

The cars were parked in the spaces clearly labeled, “15 minute customer parking ONLY.” Yet this was a daytime rule, one that, at 25 minutes after midnight, had no authority — much like the rule that anyone wanting food from a grocery store must enter during operating hours, fill a cart with unblemished produce and pay for it.

On this particular spring night, the Trader Joe’s in Falls Church, Va. — or, rather, its dumpster, was the first stop for the cars’ occupants. As it turned out, it wasn’t even necessary to go into the dumpster — nine shopping carts surrounded it, filled with bulging plastic bags. Inside were discarded loaves of Tuscan Pane bread, zucchini, oatmeal, chocolate chip scones, pita bread, naan, a package of brownie cookies, strawberries and some non-edible items, including a Trader Joe’s T-shirt, wrapping paper and some greeting cards.

Two men wearing authoritative-looking florescent yellow and orange vests approached. If they were store employees or security, the group would be asked, or more likely ordered, to leave.

Tabitha Washington repeats the greeting again and again, a litany, each repetition bearing the weight of a different inflection and stress and each as unique as the parishioner at whom she directed it. For Tabitha, “Good morning” is nothing less than the truth, an expression that sounds less like a traditional greeting and more like a final determination about the day, a judgment set as firm as cement.

The 32-year-old has come prepared that day as she always has, armed with programs laying out that day’s service. Dressed in a black skirt and purple blouse, she stands about five feet three inches and a few more if she wears her church hat – Tabitha blends in with the suits and Sunday best of the guests she is greeting.

Conservative Group Makes Over Image, Goals, After Passing of Health Care Bill

By Ladan Nekoomaram

Jim Casey, a retired grandfather carrying an American flag lawn chair, walked through the doors of the Ronald Reagan building on the morning of April 15 with purpose.

Hundreds of protesters close to his age crowded the great hall like a sea of tourists waiting for the fireworks to begin on the Fourth of July. Fanny packs, oversized flags and glittered hats filled Freedom Plaza that morning, ringing in the Tax Day Tea Party protest that was said to bring hundreds of thousands of conservatives together against government spending and control over the private sector.

Casey greeted his fellow retired comrades in the movement that has been described by FreedomWorks as the biggest grassroots political movement in recent history. But today, unlike a much-publicized Tea Party rally in September, he was also met with the faces of today’s youth, standing alongside their grandmothers and grandfathers, on a school day, to say they’ve had enough.

“I think if I don’t do something now, I’m going to be stuck with these policies throughout my life,” said Riley, a sophomore in college who did not want to give his last name. He and his cousin flew in on a red-eye flight from California to the protest.

“I want the feeling of being part of something and actually taking action and being part of a bigger group,” Riley said.

Casey was once the standard face of the Tea Party, but now, he embodies just a faction of what the movement has come to be in recent months, since the passing of Obama’s health care bill. He brought his sons and grandchildren from Gloucester County, Va., for the protest and made it a family affair. They purchased the signature red “Tea Party Patriots” t-shirts while one of his granddaughters sported a light pink shirt that read, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.”

“We want to show that we are concerned … the health bill, that’s the real big one,” he said. His mother’s doctor told her that, “at 92 years old, she probably won’t be able to be seen or have insurance to pay for it.”

Those who attended the rally on Sept. 12 witnessed a largely white, older crowd, primarily from southern or Midwest states, waving anti-Obama signs and screaming that their voices should be heard.

On Tax Day, however, the face of the Tea Party looked different, featuring a larger number of women, students and minorities, united under the message of smaller government and fiscal responsibility.

Most importantly, the new faces of the movement say they have taken it upon themselves to be leaders in their communities and weed out members touting racist, homophobic and fanatical ideas that sour the goals of the movement.

Banners waved through the warm, spring day by Freedom Plaza in the mass of protesters listening to speakers like U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), whose voice rang over the crowd.

“Freedom is my No. 1 issue, and I’m losing it one piece at a time,” said Julie Hall, who flew in from Arizona. She took time off from her business to attend with a friend, Hilary McGee, a teacher who left her family and her students behind. Hall said she has participated in Tea Party events in her state, but that wasn’t enough to enact change.

Many protesters took the overnight flights from across the country, missing work, school and spending hundreds of dollars to protest. While some tea partiers have been active online or in their communities, others felt it was important to be in government’s back yard to spread their message.

“I think the statement of being on the home turf of the people that are not listening to us … do you see us now? What part of ‘no‘ do you not understand?” Hall said. “I don’t want to be rolling over in my grave worrying about this country.”

They came from far and wide for different reasons, but the Tea Party has coalesced around three central beliefs: small government, fewer taxes and less spending. It has also gained momentum from three main goals that have kicked the movement into high gear: Take back Nov, 2, gain a bigger following and weed out those misrepresenting the party.

Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns at FreedomWorks, said 25 percent of Americans associate themselves with the Tea Party, while a New York Times poll says 18 percent of Americans are Tea Partiers.

They form local chapters through the thousands of online and social networking groups that have formed within the past year. After forming these communities, he said it’s important to reach out to other demographics, like those in urban or rural areas and minorities.

“We have to focus on recruitment,” said Steinhauser, encouraging Tea Partiers to network with each other while at the day’s events. “It’s this kind of social connectivity that has made this movement so powerful.”

The movement’s new focus was evident earlier on the day of the protest, when Matt Kibbe, the head of Freedomworks, spoke to hundreds of conservatives, families, senior citizens, mothers and students booed loud enough to fill the room with their frustration.

“Has anyone here given up? Is anyone double the energized,” he said through the echo of cheers. “Now’s the time to turn grassroots action into political accountability for all members of Congress,” he said. “If we can’t turn November 2 into a referendum of Obamacare, then we will have truly lost.”

Kibbe emphasized that at this stage, the movement has become a 50-state strategy.

According to a New York Times and CBS News poll on April 14, Tea partiers tend to be more affluent, educated, male and have families.

But for Andrew Hoffman, a recent graduate from Mary Washington in Virginia, the ideals of the Tea Party, or fiscal conservatism, have been a part of him his whole life. Coming from a mixed political family, Hoffman was raise under a roof of different political ideologies. But he found himself aligning more with his father’s conservative views. He remains a minority of in his age group, but represents the growing number of politically active conservative youths in the country.

Hoffman participated in youth conservative groups throughout high school and college, and he went door-to-door last November during the Virginia gubernatorial elections. He also worked for U.S. Rep. Frank Wolfe (R-Va) in 2008, getting his feet wet with politics on the Hill.

He’s since gotten a non-political job, so he said he hasn’t been as involved in political movements as he’d like to be, but he participates in the online communities.

“I’ve had the opportunity to get active and it kind of lent me a voice in this,” Hoffman said of his campaigning last fall. “I mean, yes, I’m joining the voice of thousands and thousands of others, but it gives me a voice behind just saying, ‘Hey, don’t blame me. I voted for McCain.’ You have this bottled up sense of frustration in the Republican core and this basically gave them a chance to say ‘Hell, no! We don’t like this.’ ”

He urged the public not to assume that Tea Partiers want no health care reform, but rather, they want it executed through the free market.

“From what best I can tell, there is a general sentiment that there needs to be health care reform within the Tea Party,” he said. “But it’s not that they’re saying, ‘Don’t do any reform whatsoever.’ But rather, they’re saying, ‘This is the wrong reform being done in the entire wrong way.’ ”

Derek Spencer, a senior at the University of Mississippi, has focused his efforts locally, getting conservative representatives elected on the state and federal level in his home state, Missouri. He rounded up supporters by starting his own website for youth in Missouri who believe in the ideals of the Tea Party.

The site, which launches in May of 2010, would include a database of voters, news about local politics and a social media component that will connect conservative students with one another on various campaigns. With a bachelor’s degree in political science and extensive work in grassroots organizing, Spencer said he’s putting his hopes on the 2010 and 2012 elections.

“I would do all kinds of things, like go around to neighborhoods, make phone calls and hold fundraisers,” he said of his experience during the 2008 Presidential election. “For the website, it’ll start as a small, local thing, but I’m going to focus on getting it down and expanding it.”

He said on the Ole Miss campus, he has noticed a growing number of students following Ron Paul and libertarian leaders who align with fiscal conservatism.

“I do see a lot of young people become more liberty-minded,” he said “The more and more these blogs come about, it’s kind of more transparent what’s going on than watching the evening news. There are so many resources, so you can dig down and get all the information you need, and they’re turning to these places for unity and a purpose.”

Youth and older generations formed social groups through FreedomWorks prior to the protest, organizing their local groups on the Mall before the evening speakers presented. At Freedom Plaza, mothers pushing their children in strollers crowded busy intersections, students taking a day off of school and young professionals filled the crowd with new and unexpected faces.

Counter-protest groups like “The Other 95 percent” also came to the protest to debunk some popular myths its members say have spread and become integral to the movement. They yelled, “Thank Obama for your tax cut,” at protesters passing on the street, saying a significant portion of Tea Partiers received tax cuts in 2009.

Alex Nowrasteh, a policy expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said misrepresenters of the party have been discouraged from attending the events, but there is no way to regulate who comes and what they do.

He and his business partner, Drew Tidwell, are working to create a feature- length movie about the different faces of the Tea Party in hopes to create a more holistic depiction of the movement. The film, not related to his work as an immigration expert at CEI, would be a fictional representation of the Tea Party across the country from California to Washington, D.C.

Nowrasteh and Tidwell have attended various Tea Parties around the country, trying to determine who embodies the movement, and along the way, they were surprised with their findings.

“Middle-aged women are basically running the movement. People who were never concerned with politics before,” he said. While this may be the case, they are also highlighting youth initiatives within the movement and how that will come to define the next generation.

“There are a lot of movies about Woodstock—so we want to talk about our generation, the youth, and our movement’s Woodstock.”

His motivation for pursuing such a project was to clear the air on misinformation and stereotyping that occurs in the media with Tea Partiers. He hopes the film would also weed out the more radical members who focus on social or unrelated issues that turn people off to the movement.

“They focus on things like race or religion, and there are some people like that. But a vast majority of them are not like that and we want to portray that accurately.”

In the past, someone attending the protests would see a number of anti-Obama signs that refer to his race, Muslim middle name or identity as a U.S. citizen. On Tax Day, few such groups attended but remained outliers, like Teresa Cao, founder of “Heaven’s Bailout.” Her group believes that the “New World Order,” or a singular governing body, got Obama elected to spread corruption and anti-Christian values. She focused on the birther issue during the protest.

“Every movement has these people,” Nowrasteh said. “I wish they would leave or get kicked out, but you can’t really kick people out. There’s no membership roster and you don’t have to pay dues or fees. But the rest of us can talk about how much we hate them.”

One of the biggest beefs he has with people who dislike the Tea Party is when people associate them with being racist because they oppose a black president. Others who try to associate religion and homosexuality with the rallies harm the movement’s intentions as well, he said.

FreedomWorks held a discussion on Tax Day explaining to Tea Partiers how to best deal with those who misrepresent the movement and how to direct reporters to voices of authority. Voice control is one of their main focuses in the coming months.

Lee Doren, the “crasher in chief” of Bureaucrash, an activist project of the CEI, says the radicals that have come to define the movement in the media are characteristic of most grassroots movements.

“If you go to a football game that has a couple thousand people, and you have some crazy drunk people with their shirts off, would you like people to say that’s a representative of what a football fan looks like?” he said. “Everyone’s upset and embarrassed by them. But at an open event where you’re encouraging the public to come, you can’t ask them to explain why they’re there.”

The media in general, he said, hasn’t done much to counter the radicals in the movement, and have in fact put them in the spotlight. Reports of cut gas lines, rocks thrown through windows, and people with Obama “Joker” masks make the front pages of the news rather than the average protester and their economic argument.

“Because quite frankly, moms with kids in strollers are not a big story if you got somebody with Obama and a Hitler mustache,” he said.

Doren started as a liberal while in undergrad and worked at an environmental lobbying organization until he went to law school, where he was “completely converted.” He joined the Tea Party’s efforts last year and has attended rallies on the local level and gave a speech at the Sept. 12 protest.

While the movement looks to the November elections, its face continues to form from the once-disorganized hodgepodge of Republicans, libertarians, former Democrats, social conservatives and radicals. The youth and the older generation are leading the way in their backyards and in the political sphere, movement organizers say, determined to get the true message across and vote out political supporters of Obama’s economic policy.

“Things have changed dramatically in a year. People now understand what you say when you say ’Tea Party Movement’ now,” Doren said.

“I mean, it’s only been around for a year and look how it has grown. How many other movements in America can you say has had this much influence in less than a year out of nowhere? None, really.”

Amid changes, some things at D.C.’s Southwest Waterfront and Seafood Market remain the same

By Joseph Liu

Sung Kim sits, poring over over his book in his dimly lit office. Printed across the pages are diagrams showing the energy flow of the human body, an ancient belief that is used in diagnosing ailments. An old computer hums loudly next to him and the green LED light flickers erratically. Even with the window open, the brightest source of light is the computer monitor.

The swaying is unnoticeable from the inside, but his office is situated on the barge in the water. Depending on the water level, market workers will line the dock with wooden steps so that customers can get a better look at what they are selling. Like the constant flowing ocean, the historic Washington D.C. Southwest Seafood Market has changed, and only the steadfast can truly understand what kind of place it is.

“I feel like I’ve been living in this place for my whole life,” Kim says. “But I’ve only been here for six years.”

Just south of the Tidal Basin and a few blocks from the Jefferson Memorial, the historic Southwest waterfront has been a destination for those seeking fresh seafood for centuries. Located at the intersections of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, the waterfront has attracted settlers since before the United States was a country.

According to the Southwest D.C. Web site, Pierre L’Enfant, the surveyor and planner for D.C., called the area “a magnificent entranceway.”

In 1918, the Municipal Fish Market provided space for 24 merchant stalls and an office for the Department of Weights, Measures and Markets. These stalls replaced the sailors that would dock at the pier and sell their goods right off the boats.

Paul K. Williams writes in his book,“Images of America: Southwest Washington, D.C.,” that as Washington became more populated, the southwest area of the city started attracting the poorest residents. Worried that the area would become a slum, urban planning concepts molded the area into an innovative apartment and cooperative living community.

Photographs and news clippings from that era show a much bigger Seafood Market than is there now. In 1958, Garnet W. Jex, a graphic arts and painter, chronicled the change in Southwest D.C. in slide presentation titled, “The Bulldozer and the Rose.” This presentation featured pictures of the old Southwest waterfront with boats lining the docks and signs boasting, “Jumbo Hard Crabs”

Lida Churchville, Historian for the Southwest D.C. Neighborhood Assembly and librarian at the D.C. Historical Society, believes that some culture was destroyed during the 1950s renovation.

“A lot of people left and never came back. … There was a whole Jewish community… that’s never come back,” she said.

A lot of buildings, including churches and synagogues, were destroyed, but she does understand why.

“Some of the buildings that were torn down, and today we would love to have back, were probably ugly to the people back then,” she said.

Currently, four businesses occupy the Seafood Market. Three out of the four are family-owned and have been there for generations. The fourth business is owned by a Sung Kim, a Korean immigrant who, following in the footsteps of immigrants before him, has settled in the waterfront to make a living.

He speaks slowly and thoughtfully. Lazy th’s and r’s, roll off his tongue. His face is almost child-like, but his skin is lightly traced with wrinkles.

His eyes give off a tiredness that reflects his life. Short and stocky, his body looks as if it holds power. His hands, kept mostly in his pockets, are thick and callused with work.

“1980 I came [to America],” he says as he thinks back on how he came to own Pruitt’s Seafood.

His dream was to own a business in America, someplace he could call his own. As many immigrants have, he opened a drycleaning shop. While working, he said, he injured his back and could not continue to do manual labor.

He decided to change careers and bought a seafood restaurant in Alexandria. Because of this restaurant, he made many trips to the fish market. Every time he came, the market was packed and busy.

“It was a once in a lifetime,” Kim said about his purchase of the market.

With only three other shops in the area, the location is amazing, he said.

Later he discovered that he might have been too optimistic.

Seafood is a seasonal good, with different fish and crabs coming and going. Prices change with the season and there is never a guarantee that you will have goods to sell.

“That’s why the seafood business is very hard,” he said. “Sometimes 40 dollars for a bushel, sometimes 120 dollars.” Not only do the costs of a bushel of crabs change, but the size of the crabs change as well.

You can open up a bushel and it will only be full 50 percent full, he said.

“This is America, can you believe it? When you pay the top price, the quality is the bottom,” he said.

He does have hope for the future though. As tourist season arrives and the weather clears up, he hopes that business will pick up as well. News of renovations to the waterfront also lifts his spirits.

After the urban renewal of the 1950s, the waterfront has changed very little. Concrete hotels that bear the marks of time are scattered next to the fish market. Restaurants with solid but worn porches lie all the way up to the water’s edge.

In 2010, a new renovation project is scheduled to begin. Malls, apartments, parks, open spaces, upscale stores will all be part of this project. Most importantly, according to the Southwest D.C. Waterfront Web site, this project will be about the water.

“The redevelopment will transform the marina and channel area to optimize both water traffic and views,” it announces.

Paul Harrison, manager at Jessie Taylor Seafood, is skeptical about the new renovations planned for the Southwest.

“It’s been talk of this for at least 25 years, but I’ve not see anything yet, so it makes you wonder,” he said.

Even with the hope of renovation to renew businesses in this area, Kim still said he faces many problems.

Because all the businesses around him have been owned by the same family for many generations, they already know how to run a business.

He puts his black cell phone back in his pocket and looks at his mother with a smile. For months, Brandan, 23, like many other college graduates in Prince George’s County, Md., has searched for a job in the area that would allow him to pay the bills, help out around the house and, as he puts it, “feel like an adult, man.”

Brandan stands up from the small kitchen table and looks at his mother.

“That’s good, Brandan,” she says with worried tone.

She raises an eyebrow and folds her arms. She has seen this scenario play out several times since graduation: Brandan needs a job, finds something and then it doesn’t work out. Maybe this time will be different; maybe this time he’ll finally have something he loves to do. Brandan recently decided he wants to go to graduate school, so any extra money will help. He explains the job is for the Census Bureau, one that will have him going door to door and asking survey questions for the Census.

“I know I’m not the most outspoken person, but the pay is great, Mom,” he says.

Brandan, a 2009 graduate of Salisbury University in Salisbury, Md., is not the first Prince George’s County resident to go through this. And he won’t be the last.

Prince George’s County’s unemployment rate is 7.6 percent, a high number especially when compared to the unemployment rates of neighboring counties Charles and Montgomery, 6.4 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively. The state of Maryland’s overall unemployment rate is 7.7 percent.

Due to the county’s current economic situation and record-high unemployment rates, many African American college graduates are going back to school – some to buy some time, others because they want to do everything they can to leap into the workforce. Mary Jones, a federal government employee for more than 30 years, believes that young African Americans are not completely prepared to enter the workforce.

“The young people, specifically the males, that are qualified for jobs should focus on the little things: Social skills, etiquette, resume building, dressing for success and presentation,” Jones says. “There’s already a stereotype they have to face and most employers would rather hire a white man with a crime record than a black man with a college degree.”

Like Brandan Pippens, several young African American residents of Prince George’s County, Md., are dealing with this grim reality and have been confronted with the decisions that go along with it.

Ryan Jones, 24, no relation to Mary, is also a recent college graduate searching for a job, and harboring hopes of continuing his education.

“Absolutely, definitely a super issue,” Ryan said, when asked whether tuition and financial aid play an important role in deciding his future employment and school choices.

A University of Maryland 2009 graduate with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology, he decided, after months of thinking and planning, that he would pursue law school. According to Ryan, who has been out of work since May, he can get better opportunities with a law degree, but concedes that if the country’s economic situation was better and he had a job, he might not be considering law school.

During school, Jones had what he would describe as “an easy little job,” working at a school gym. This gave him a direct line of communication with the school’s Athletic Director, for whom Jones interned during his senior year. After working for free for a year in hopes of getting a full-time job, Jones left the position once it became clear his extra work was not going to lead to paid employment.

“It got to a point where I had to find something else. I’ve had some contacts with sports agents who need extra help, so right now all I can do is try to work with them and hope for the best,” Ryan says.

Like Pippens, Ryan is just trying to get the extra experience needed to get his foot in the door, even starting a Web site highlighting local sports. He’s keeping his eyes open for new talent, and for established talent that returns to the area, such as NBA star Kevin Durant.

“I knew KD (Kevin Durant) was from around the way and I heard through a couple of people that he works out here during the summer. One day, I decided to go to a couple basketball tournaments in the area and I saw him at one. I introduced myself and did a little interview with him and had someone film it,” Ryan says, with a smirk on his face.

He knows it isn’t much, but feels that if he can show a sports agent that he can foster relationships with players, then he may be one step closer.

Pippens also has tried several ways to land a job, including making Craigslist a part of his daily routine and some days, his only routine. He wants to move out of his parents’ house. “My parents were helping out someone who didn’t have a job and I was feeling like it was time to leave,” Pippens says.

With new homes being built everywhere in Prince George’s county, the cost of living index for 2009 was 116.7 compared to the national average of 100. Apartment buildings are being phased out for townhomes and condominiums. Local businesses are being pushed aside for national chains, and property values are rising across the county. While many, like Pippens, are doing everything they can to leave home, some hesitate to leave the nest.

Alicia Oliver, 24, has no problem staying at home in Prince George’s county until she has enough money and a secure enough job to move out.

“I feel like I shouldn’t rush it if I don’t have to,” says Oliver. “My mother is fine with me staying home because she gets it and I have no problem staying here. I feel like moving out is a status thing and I’m not going to break myself to meet a certain standard.”

Oliver is a contractor at the Department of Homeland Security. While she is happy to be employed, she realizes that being a contractor is not as stable as actual federal employment.

“Right now, I am going through that exact situation, as my organization lost the bid for the contract and as of Nov. 18, the contract ended,” Oliver says.

Her mother, Yvette Oliver, works for Homeland Security as well, but Oliver understands that there is not much her mother can do as far as securing her a job.

“I’m just glad she’s helping out where she can, I can’t ask more than that,” says Oliver.

Oliver is paying a car note, car insurance, a cell phone bill and tuition for her graduate courses at University of Maryland University College, and doesn’t want the extra hassle of paying rent until she is firmly on her feet. Some days she takes the Metro to work although she “can’t stand it.” On days where she gets out of bed late, she drives from her home in Largo, Md., to her job in Crystal City, Va. If she did not live at home, she says, she would not be able to make that choice.

Aside from the immediate monetary benefits, Oliver’s decision to stay at home has helped her career decisions as well.

“When I got out of school, I wanted to go into the medical field and was ready to move to North Carolina because that’s where a lot of the jobs were. Now, being at DHS and being in grad school, I realized I love administration and Human Resources,” Oliver says. “That’s what I want to do, and I’m hoping they can create a position in my office for me and that I can keep working in HR.”

Oliver was not forced to make a decision, and had the luxury of time to shape her future. At times, fate conspired to thwart her attempts at earlier jobs she took “just to get paid.”

“I was applying for jobs that weren’t even in my field (social work) just to get paid,” says Pippens. “Before I took a Census Bureau job, I had a political canvassing job that I thought would be cool. Of course, I got the job and then the blizzards hit, so the job didn’t last long.”

Pippen’s versions of a job “just to get paid” was at the Hoffman AMC 25, a movie theater located in Alexandria, Va. His first day on the job was his last day.

“So, I got the job and I thought it’d be people my age working here. The first day, I’m here for training and the kids are talking about their plans for junior or senior year of high school! I just couldn’t do it, man. I wanted a job to make me feel like an adult and my coworkers are kids younger than my little sister.”

With many local businesses in the area being shut down and much of the workforce earning a living from the federal government, Pippens tried his luck in that sector, even before Craiglistbecame a daily routine.

Dante Esquilin is one Prince George’s County resident who did find employment in the federal government – after a roundabout journey that often led to frustrating dead ends.

Esquilin, a 2009 graduate of North Carolina A&T, graduated with hops of teaching high school history. While he was in college, Esquilin would return home to Prince George’s County, Md., every summer and worked for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

He’d wake up everyday, grab his work badge, put on his shirt, tie, slacks and shoes and head to work on weekdays and have the weekends to himself – all while putting a “good” amount of money in his pocket. However, once he graduated, he knew the federal government job would not be available since he was no longer a student, so he stayed in North Carolina for a while, working at a local UPS for a while to make ends meet.

“I stayed down south for a while but I missed home and when I came home, I went to as many job fairs as I could,” says Esquilin. “At that point, I wasn’t even thinking about teaching.”

In early 2009, after some unsuccessful job fairs, he realized that maybe he should rethink his position on teaching.

“I went to my old high school, Bishop McNamara, and I’m there talking to the teachers and the principal and they say that I should try to get a gig as a substitute teacher. Sounded good to me,” Esquilin says, with a shrug of his shoulders.

After applying through the Prince George’s County school system Web site, Esquilin began substituting for local high schools such as Friendly High School and even managed to get in the system at his high school alma mater, Bishop McNamara High School, a private school in Prince George’s County, Md.

“It was fine for a while, but it wasn’t steady income. If they needed me to work then I worked but if not, I’m home with nothing to do except look for more jobs,” Esquilin says.

Last summer, a door opened, leaning him back to the TSA through the Career Residents Program.

“This lady who worked with my mother told me about this program and I applied and got in. Now, I’m an official federal employee.”

Pippens was not so lucky in finding long-term federal employment but feels that’s for a reason.

“I really wanted to just help people, specifically young kids with disabilities, and doing the government thing isn’t going to put me in that position. But at the time, I just needed the money,” says Pippens. “More than likely, I would have been bored.”

Brandan strokes his chin and begins to discuss the nadir of his job-seeking journey. He stares off into space, and talks about an interview he was granted with an organization in Baltimore, Md. The job would allow him to work with young men and women with learning disabilities, and he felt that his age would make him a good candidate with the job since he could relate.

“I went on the interview and there’s a 40-year-old white guy interviewing as well,” recalls Pippens. “When he stepped out of the office, I could tell he got the job and it was based on the fact that he had the experience.”

While he can laugh at the situation now, at the time, it drove him crazy. He kept hearing that he needed the experience to get a job yet without a job, how could he obtain the experience? The Census Bureau job fell into his lap, but it was not something he really wanted to do, just a pit stop on his journey.

Much like Ryan Jones, he wanted to continue his education and earning an M.A. was not really something he wanted to do, but he knew it was necessary.

“Since my senior year at Salisbury, I was told that without the graduate degree, I wouldn’t get the career I wanted,” says Pippens. “But this Census Bureau job just wasn’t doing it for me. I told my mom I’m not the most outspoken person and I knew that the door-to-door thing would be hard, but it was tougher than I thought, man.”

After the Census Bureau job fell through, Brandan slid back into his normal routine of searching Craigslist for jobs and added The Washington Post’s jobs site as a part of his daily repertoire. One day in March, he stumbled onto a listing that he thought could change things.

“I found an opening at Compass Inc., a social work company in Silver Spring (Maryland). I figured I’d give it a shot,” recalls Pippens. “I applied and a few days later, I got a call from their HR department asking me to come in for an interview. My first thought was, ‘Wow, this is unexpected.’ ”

Pippens was nervous as he went on the interview, especially when he was told he needed to take a test to get the job. But he did not let his nerves get the better of him.

“A few days later, I got another phone call and I was told the job was mine.”

Pippens says his parents were more excited than relieved, because they felt the positive vibes he was giving off. They knew this job would allow him to do what he wanted to do, he says.

“I wanted to work with disadvantaged kids in a residential setting and Compass would allow me to do that. To hear, ‘You’re hired,’ for something I want to do, was definitely a great feeling and a little weird.”

Before the Compass Inc. job came through, Pippens’ routine also consisted of researching university to get the master’s degree he desired. He knew he needed somewhere close, relatively inexpensive and a program that was quick.

“I wanted to be able to start my career at a young age, that was the most important thing,” says Pippens. “I didn’t want to be in school for two years hoping to find a job when I got out because the landscape can change so quickly in that time.”

His research led him to the University of Maryland Baltimore Campus (UMBC). According to Pippens, UMBC is one of the top schools in the country for social work and they offer an Advanced Standing Program that allows students to finish their Graduate program in one year. Also, as Pippens puts it, “in-state tuition is always a plus, man.”

“To apply, I needed to do an essay and get a couple professional references and I figured there was no way I was going to get in, he says. “I didn’t have much professional experience, so where would I get these references from?”

After writing the essay, Pippens contacted his internship supervisor from his senior year at Salisbury..

Also, “I did a lot of theater work, so I decided to focus on the professors I did plays for and one in particular wrote a long letter to UMB,” says Pippens. “He not only recommended me for the school’s Advanced Standing Program, but for the Compass Inc. job”

“It helps to have people like that in your corner. “

When he received the Compass Inc. job, he had not heard from UMBC for weeks.

Then, one day, he came home from a day of running errands, and he opened the mailbox to find a small envelope from UMBC addressed to him. It was less than a week after Compass Inc. had hired him.

“It was a crazy feeling because the envelope was so small, I knew there was no way I was getting in; I figured it was the rejection letter,” Pippens recalls.

To his surprise, not only did Pippens get into UMBC’s Graduate school, but he was accepted into the Advanced Standing Program as well. His parents were proud. Most of all, they were happy that the spark the new job provided would continue to glow with the new focus his master’s program would bring to his life. His parents knew his course was now “solid.”

“It’s crazy now that I think about it, but all of this happened the same week, man,” Pippens says. “Yeah, it had to be the same week. I was on cloud nine already with the job but getting back into school was icing on the cake. It was such a dope feeling. Now I know I have a goal for at least a year.”

Looking back on his journey of the past year, Pippens often thinks about the song, “The Passenger,” by Iggy Pop. It got him through the tough times, he says, because he felt he was doing a lot of traveling, mentally and physically, trying to find his way and find what he actually wanted to do.

Though Pippens isn’t certain what will happen after he graduates with his master’s, he thinks often of the song’s lyrics:

“I am the passenger / And I ride and I ride / I ride through the city’s backsides / I see the stars come out of the sky / Yeah, they’re bright in a hollow sky/ You know it looks so good tonight.”

When undocumented workers Miguel and Norma first migrated from Monterrey, Mexico, to the United States with their two children in 2003, their only experiences with prenatal care and birthing was in hospitals.

Now, as the couple, whose last names have been omitted to because of their immigration status, look toward welcoming twins in June, they find themselves in unfamiliar territory, and not just because they don’t speak English.

Miguel and Norma are part of a growing movement in the country to rely on midwives for health care during and after pregnancy and childbirth.

Despite cultural and economic differences though, the pair seem split in their approach to the new experience.

The center, which opened on Aug. 3, 2009, is headed by Certified Nurse Midwives Sheila Mathis and Kathleen McClelland. Mathis and her husband, Derrick, founded the operation after she noticed that a portion of her community – namely, minority females – were not receiving the health care it deserved, she said.

“Predominantly, the women that we serve are women who would have a hard time finding help elsewhere,” McClelland said. “Not even the health department was providing care for women with Medicaid.”

Since the facility opened, it has been operating steadily at maximum capacity levels for its small staff, mostly because of word-of-mouth from patients, said Erika Hernandez, a medical assistant and Spanish-English translator.

McClelland said about half of the clients speak only Spanish.

“A lot of them come in scared because they don’t know if there’s going to be someone who speaks their language … but since I’m here they feel more comfortable,” Hernandez said.

Norma agreed. She said she’s nervous about being in the hospital, without the translations system she’s used to.

The center currently has a working relationship with Prince William Hospital, located across the street, which requires the midwives’ patients give birth at the hospital.

But the midwives are not permitted to accompany their patients during the birthing process.

The center’s primary contact in the hospital, Theresa Post, said she was not authorized to comment about the situation, and other hospital officials did not return phone calls.

Mathis and McClelland are in the process of seeking out special privileges to allow them to stay with their clients throughout the entire birth. So far, McClelland said, the hospital has not given any hint toward that being a possibility.

When she spoke with the Department of Medical Credentialing at the hospital, McClelland said they told her that the hospital doesn’t give midwives credentials. But they do give advanced nurses special credentials in certain situations, “so they don’t really know what to do with us yet,” she said.

The situation is not an anomaly. Across America, opinions are divided regarding midwives’ role during births.

Susan Hodges, president of Citizens for Midwifery, a non-profit organization seeking to make midwife services universally available to all childbearing women, said the medical community is the problem.

“Hospitals are businesses … normal labor is unpredictable and hospitals can’t organize staff and resources in a cost-efficient manner to deal with it,” she said.

McClelland has experienced first-hand the fallout of this debate. About 10 years ago, she was employed by a major hospital as one of four certified nurse midwives on staff. They worked nights, weekends and holidays for almost four years, she said, when the obstetricians were off duty. Then, the hospital laid them off with just a couple of weeks’ notice.

“I guess they felt they could save money by having private [obstetricians] take turns with our shifts … if there was another reason, it wasn’t made known to us,” McClelland said.

Hodges said that she has heard from many nurses over the years who admit that when working in a labor and delivery unit, it is not uncommon to be told that their job is to get as many women as possible to have an epidural.

Midwives promote the exact opposite.

“We seek to make women central in the care we provide … they make the decisions about their needs,” Mathis said.

When in labor then, midwives encourage mothers to deliver naturally, meaning no drugs and no surgery.

“Left to their own ability to labor, women deliver their babies just fine … that doesn’t mean they should deliver unattended; even other countries have people go to homes to help monitor births,” Mathis said.

So, Hodges, said, the major question in the debate should be who decides what options mothers have and how those decisions are made.

“Right now, there’s no accountability,” she said.

As an example, Hodges said it is extremely difficult for midwives in the state of New York, where she is based, to practice home births right now.

“It’s a little bit like forcing Ford to get permission from General Motors to open a showroom,” she said.

To give expectant mothers a better idea about the issues in the midwife vs. doctor debate for childbirth, Mathis and McClelland recommend watching the documentary, “The Business of Being Born.” In the film, executive producer Ricki Lake calls the hospital birth process “a snowball effect” of drug administration, which can create a confusing and frightening experience, rather than the intimate and deep encounter she believes is meant to occur naturally.

Women in the film agree that they were “not allowed” to have long labor sessions in the hospital, which is where labor-inducing drugs like pitocin come in. Often, once pitocin in administered, the patients are more likely to opt for an epidural because of the pain produced from the intensified contractions. But epidurals can counter the effect of pitocin, slowing down the labor process. As the cycle of drugs carries on, the baby can begin to suffer, forcing the mother to deliver via emergency cesarean section.

As a result, the United States ranks poorly in maternal and perinatal mortality rates, the rates at which mothers and babies, respectively, die during the birth process.

Often, when patients first arrive to the clinic, they rely on Hernandez to communicate their needs for them to the midwives, she said. But, in the hospital, their experience can be rushed and less personal.

“The fact that our hospitals are businesses can really create a conflict of interest,” Hodges said. “Organized medicine has long taken a stand against any form of medicine by a midwife without supervision because they believe it’s more dangerous. They don’t have studies or reports to back it up, they just put that viewpoint out there.”

Mathis said many women go through with surgery because of fear related to the birth process. ”With C-sections they can schedule them, it’s a short procedure, so they feel it’s a better option,.”

By disallowing midwives to accompany their patients in the delivery room, the fear is that the birthing experience becomes mush harsher and options are not fully discussed, McClelland said.

Even if they were granted access to the delivery rooms though, the certified nurse midwives would still need a doctor to agree to supervise the births.

Some hospitals might opt to only allow doctors to administer the births though, because of the predominant preference in the medical community for doctors, Hodges said.

“These positions are not based on any scientific evidence … there’s this attitude that ‘well, we went to school for 89 years …’ but that doesn’t mean they have the experience,” Hodges said.

A hospital receives the same amount of insurance payment regardless of how long it takes a patient to deliver their baby, she said. That creates an incentive to get as many patients through the process in as little time as possible, and the added services, drugs and surgeries, can increase costs, she said.

“I’m not accusing any hospital of deliberately adding on services … but the fact of the matter is there’s an incentive,” Hodges said.

“It’s cheaper for a hospital to have a midwife on staff because they’ll encourage [patients] to go natural, and recover at home. That takes the burden off of the nursing staff,” Hernandez said.

While Mathis and McClelland would love to be able to accompany their patients for that reason and for their patients’ comfort, there seem to be a lot of issues to work.

“We haven’t gotten as far as really pressing the point … we’re trying to first meet the basic needs of our patients,” McClelland.

More than health care

If Mathis and McClelland are unable to gain the credential privileges they hope for, they’re also looking at the possibility of starting a birthing center, to continue their practice without the rules and constraints of the hospital, McClelland said.

“I honestly think if we opened a birthing center it would scare the pants off the hospital … about 99 percent of our patients would just skip the hospital,” Hernandez said.

But, she also hinted that if Mathis and McClelland can get their access permissions for the labor and delivery unit, the idea of a birthing center might fade away a little bit.

“If they’re nice and friendly and let [Mathis and McClelland] in there, we might opt for hospital births,” Hernandez said.

The birthing center would be a viable extension for the clinic, which operates more as a care center for women, at discounted rates.

“We have a lot of walk-ins,” said Janika Ellis, an office assistant at the clinic. “In the end, I think they realize the cost difference … we had a lot of patients looking at the costs like ‘oh my gosh, one of [another doctor’s office’s] labs is $1,500,’ and our whole cost is $2,000.”

The fees for the clinic include pregnancy check-ups from the time the woman finds out she’s pregnant, but many women come to the clinic to start their care considerably late in their pregnancies.

“The reason isn’t because they don’t want prenatal [care], it’s because of the system,” Hernandez said, referring to the costs and insurance issues that many undocumented workers face with health care.

“They just don’t know that help is out there … you don’t want patients to forgo exams, so why make them a-la-carte?” she said.

Since the clinic recently acquired non-profit status, so it can receive grants — like the one it received from March of Dimes to begin offering Centering Pregnancy, a new model prenatal care in a group setting — the staff hopes that a birthing center could also become a reality.

“The sense of community has been broken in this area … so many of our women come from transient families, so their immediate family members are not available to support them,” Mathis said.

A birthing center, in combination with the centering pregnancy classes, could help restore that supportive community aspect not only between the mothers but also between the patients and their care providers.

“We know that none of us will get rich, but we want to provide the best care … this [clinic] belongs to the community,” Mathis said.

Hodges said there is often a significant overlap between a birth center and a home birth, so patients might feel more comfortable giving birth in a center than in a hospital.

In the past, licensed birth centers could accept Medicaid patients, but Medicaid would not pay the facility fee related to the birthing center. It did pay a facility fee to hospitals for their births. As a result, it was much more difficult for birthing centers to accept Medicaid patients, who tend to be low-income patients, Hodges said.

With the new health care bill though, Medicaid is required to provide a facility fee for birthing centers. And nurse midwives will make the same amount of money that obstetrician-gynecologists make.

“I had a home birth with a midwife who had a legal service in the state of New York, but insurance wouldn’t cover it,” Hodges said.

Now, since insurance would cover more of the cost involved with birthing centers, and since birthing centers can provide a comparable experience to a home birth, there may be more incentive for women to opt for a center instead of a hospital.

“The quality of prenatal care outside of a hospital is superior and is the most important factor to preventing problems during birth,” Hodges said. “Hospitals’ nurses have high case loads so they can’t give the same care.”

When it comes down to it, Hodges said, it’s important for women to do their homework and figure out what kind of care they’ll get from different providers.

Nancy Heller remembers teaching a 6-year-old boy with noncommunicative autism to ride. On that particular day, she decided to have him ride with a bareback pad, which helps with movement, on Forrest, a brown bay pony in his 20s.

The exercise was called “Around the World,” where the rider puts one foot over the front of the horse and rides side saddle. The feet are on the side and one foot is on the back so the rider is basically riding backwards. After the boy went around the arena, he took his finger and made a circle with it and pointed toward the horse’s ears.

Heller, now a therapeutic horseback riding instructor at Potomac Horse Center in Gaithersburg, Md., took this to mean the boy wanted to turn frontwards. She moved his leg over the rump in the same direction he moved his finger in a circle, in order to let him know she was understanding what he was trying to communicate.

“Big smile, like he had overcome his fears and that he communicated to me and I understood what he was saying,” Heller said.

He took his feet out of the stirrups and then he signed “Finished.”

Heller was so happy because the boy usually babbles and mimics signing, but this time he communicated. Heller was really proud. The boy’s caregiver, who was watching the whole time, was thrilled. He didn’t need assistance tapping his feet against the horse.

“I’ve never had a breakthrough like this before,” Heller said.

For Heller and other experts on equine therapy in the Washington, D.C., Metro area, this and many other similar stories reinforce something they say humans have known for centuries: Horses have a unique ability to help people with therapy and rehabilitation from physical and psychological ailments.

Therapeutic riding began around 5th century B.C. in ancient Greece, when wounded warriors used horses for therapy and rehabilitation, said Marty Leff, a NARHA advanced certified therapeutic horseback riding instructor and one of the founders of the therapeutic riding program at Potomac Horse Center In Germany, horses were used for physical therapy, especially after World War I and II.

“Building a relationship with an animal is very rewarding in many aspects,” said Heller, a registered certified therapeutic horseback riding instructor who has been at Potomac Horse Center for nearly six years.

When those with an emotional, social or psychological disability are given trust and loyalty from a horse, they feel very important and their self-esteem rises, she said. The reassurance allows riders to extend their relationship with horses to personal relationships with other people, she added. “Horses also help people feel in control of their situation because there is a direct correlation between action and reaction.”

Horses mirror and read the rider’s emotions and body language. Horses cannot lie. These characteristics aid the human therapist or instructor, as well as human assistants, by letting them know exactly what’s going on with the rider in attitude, personality and emotions almost immediately. Horses change a rider’s awareness of his or her surroundings so the rider can be more attentive and engage with others where they wouldn’t interact with anyone at all, said Colleen Murphy, a physical therapist who used to work in the D.C. area but who now owns a private practice in Kentucky that focuses on sensory processing.

Horses help the human therapist or instructor find hidden emotions and issues in a more proficient and accelerated manner, which aids the rider and the therapist in developing problem-solving skills. Most times, riding a horse and contact with the horse are motivators forcing riders with noncommunicative autism to sign or verbally communicate, said Davorka Suvak, the program director at SPIRIT Open Equestrian Program in Herndon, Va.

For those with autism who are also noncommunicative, they physically connect and thus communicate with the horse and eventually learn to communicate with people. The noncommunicative autistic learn to focus on something outside themselves, interact with other people and respond to verbal cues from the instructor to complete specific tasks, Suvak said. Thus, horses give those in the noncommunicative spectrum of autism a voice.

According to Susan Avjian, a hippotherapist for more than 20 years who worked with students with autism at the Katherine Thomas School in Rockville, Md., horses not only heal physical ailments, but also fill gaps of emotional need.

A woman with mutiple sclerosis made a goal to be able to walk down the aisle on her wedding day. After a period of therapy, walking down the aisle didn’t look like it was going to be possible for her, but she had a plan. The wedding party knew about it, but the guests didn’t. The horse center where she went for therapy sessions worked with her and she was able to ride a therapy horse down the aisle.

“For her to be able to not be bound her wheelchair was just a phenomenal experience,” Avjian said. “It was just such a wonderful way for her to do something different, to feel more like everybody else and to have something special in her life on her wedding day.”

To Avjian, the bride was an example of why equine therapy is important.

Defining equine therapy

Some believe the theories behind horse therapy developed from Gestalt Therapy, a psychotherapy in the 1950s focusing on the individual’s experience in the moment, the therapist-client relationship and the environmental and social contexts in which these things take place. In 1969, the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association (NARHA) was founded for those with physical disabilities. The Equine Facilitated Mental Health Associated became a branch of NARHA in 1996 to cater to those with nonphysical disabilities.

The expanse of what horse therapy actually covered became so vast, from grooming a horse to vaulting (a running jump over an obstacle on horseback), that NARHA only goes by the acronym now. NARHA also changed the official term for equine therapy to equine-assisted activity and therapy (EAAT). EAAT has only become more widely recognized in the last four years, and horse therapy terms are constantly changing.

In therapy involving horses, the horse can be seen as the teacher, the assistant or the tool. “Working with horses provides the therapist with an object in the space on which to promote projection and identification,” said Dr. Elisabeth Reichert, a social work professor at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Ill.

The goals that are to be achieved are basically the same in an equine environment as it is in the clinic. Avjian said the only difference is the tool or equipment.

In the clinic, a therapist is limited to inanimate objects, such as a swing or ball. In an equine environment, the horse and the arena are the tools. Horses offer a recreational component for motivation that dead objects can’t. The motivation assists the rider to carry their skills into the functional realm of their everyday lives, she added.

“We’re treating our clients in a very holistic way. We don’t just slice it and say I’m a PT, and OT, I’m this or that,” said Avjian. “The whole body works together and we incorporate it all. Any good instructor or therapist is going to look at things in that way as well.”

According to Murphy, America’s health care system of payment requires therapists to segment into small areas. A good therapist works on improving every part of the rider, she said. “We’re all doing the same things, we’re just writing the goals up in different ways to kind of slant toward our profession.”

A proper horse therapy session for students who can’t ride on their own involves five humans: the lead next to the horse’s head, two spotters on each side of the horse, the student on the horse’s back, and the therapist at the center of the arena or moving alongside the horse.

At Potomac Horse Center each student gets half an hour of riding. Adjusting the stirrups and feeding the horse is part of the allotted time. Heller employs 19 horses for therapy in the small arena. She has 30 students. One-third of them have autism, one-third have a learning disability of some sort and one-third have something that doesn’t fall into those categories. Students as young as 5 years old can ride under Heller’s supervision, but she makes exceptions. Currently, her youngest student is 3 years old and her oldest student is 59.

“To some people, it gets through to them where none of the other therapies do get through to them,” Heller said. “To some people, they’re just tired of the same old therapy in a room, especially physical therapy.”

Not only is equine therapy a more exciting form of therapy, but Murphy believes students gain tremendous self-esteem when they can maneuver a 1,000-pound beast. A 3-year-old former student of hers has only been speaking in one or two-word sentences and after his first day of leaving hippotherapy, he got back into the car with his mom and said, “Want Costco, slice of pizza.” It was the longest sentence he had every communicated with his mom. And she was just incredibly teary-eyed and so excited for him to move over into the new domain of language.

All about horses

Horses are flight and instinct animals, but also majestic, large and powerful. For the noncommunicative autistic, a horse’s innate instincts are a huge benefit.

“Horses are so big that when someone who doesn’t have a lot of success in life is able to succeed on horseback, that’s really a big thing,” Leff said. “When you tell the horse to go left and it actually goes left—that’s a big deal.”

Horses can be intimidating, thus when riders accomplish any task involving a horse they overcome their fears and problems, establish and grow self-confidence and sometimes even begin healing and curing the issue at hand.

There are horses who take advantage of the helpless and then there are generous and kind ones that are born to do therapy, she said.

“My therapeutic horses were my other set of hands,” Leff said.

Her first requirements for a horse is soundness and attitude. She tests to see if the horse is therapy material by jumping up from behind something and screaming at the horse. “You never know and if you have some kids from the extreme end of the autism spectrum, they can do all kinds of interesting things so the horse has to be close to bombproof.”

Leff started the therapeutic riding program at Potomac Horse Center in 1994. She wrote the groundwork manual, including therapeutic riding rules and guidelines, for the center’s program. She worked with the center on teaching people about horses and riding as well as how to care for a horse. Leff is involved with “remedial-psychoeducational and recreational riding and groundwork” and incorporated her extensive training in hippotherapy and sensory integration into the center’s curriculum.

Leff has had students who were afraid and had to be coaxed to get on a horse. But when they find themselves riding a horse, “they feel like they’re 1,000 feet tall,” she said. “What it does for self-esteem is just remarkable.”

One of her former students was a very bright girl — gifted but with severe learning disabilities, she said. During a school bus ride, a bunch of boys were bullying another student. The girl got up, told them to sit down, behave and leave the other student alone.

“I figured if I can ride a 1,000 pound horse, I can tell a couple of 100-pound boys to behave,” the girl said.

While riding a horse improves the rider’s circulation, muscle control and coordination, Suvak said, the more important aspects include “a very profound bond riders develop with their horses.” Horses are companion animals, attuned to the smallest movement, attitude and emotion, she said. They look to their riders for direction and love.

Horses are simple creatures. They aren’t demanding. They want to understand their riders and want the riders to understand them.

“Because of the love and trust they give, their fine-tuned responses, and desire to please, they are extremely effective in creating a bond with autistic riders that encourages communication and interaction,” she added.

Equine versus clinic therapy

Children with some form of autism in the pre-school years can greatly benefit from a combination of therapies and experiences, said Virginia Kane, director of occupational therapy at Skill Builders, a speech-language and occupational therapy organization in Arlington, Va.

According to Dr. Stanley Greenspan, a well-known psychologist in the D.C. metro area, parents should spend the money they would have for their children’s college on establishing skills during the pre-school years for children with autism so that they may have the opportunity to even think of college.

“So much can happen before they get to kindergarten,” Kane said. “Children with autism are very oftentimes involved in occupational therapy for work on their sensory motor skills, body awareness—so they can have a better sense of how to interact with other bodies.”

They’re also getting speech therapy coupled with play therapy or psychology counseling in order to figure out all the effects autism has on the individual, she added.

At the elementary school age, a child should be able to handle the school day, sit upright at a desk, lift their head up and look at the board and write. Occupational therapists help children work on trunk control, shoulder and wrist stability, finger skills and insolated control of the muscles. Riding a horse helps those slower in learning develop trunk control by encouraging good posture with a straight back, Kane said.

Skill Builders sees many children with sensory processing issues, sensory integration dysfunction and learning disabilities, either coupled with sensory integration dysfunction or as the main problem.

Sensory processing is essential to normal functioning. The three primary sensory systems are vestibular, proprioception and tactile. According to Murphy, when a person has sensory processing disorders, the person usually has problems in all three areas. “The proprioception has a bigger job than just knowing where our body is,” she said. “It is also the input that regulates our sense of being. It’s a very regulatory input. Those are direct links into the brain.”

Therapy in a clinic also involves visual perception and visual motor activities. “We do a lot with bilateral coordination because in OT we look at providing a child with a good sensory motor foundation,” Kane said. “If they don’t have the good core muscle strength, the right-left coordination in their bodies, theoretically it’s more difficult to get refined left-to-right across the paper.”

Therapy focusing on visual development assists a noncommunicative rider with autism, who never looks in the eye of individuals or who is very ego-centric, to think of somebody else, Murphy said. “Part of the riding is brushing the horse and taking care of the horse and it starts to move them out of ‘me me me’ to a ‘we.’ ”

In a clinic, a therapist would use a pencil to gauge the student’s awareness of their muscle and joint position, and knowledge of how tightly and efficiently the student is using the pencil. In an equine setting, the horse therapist or instructor uses a horse to find and develop the rider’s self-awareness of their bodies. Sensory processing is the base on which the rider builds a good knowledge of his or her body to even go off into other areas, Murphy said. “There has to be a strong sensory core to have good self-esteem.”

Equine therapy: the positives, negatives

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2009 ADDM autism prevalence report concluded the prevalence of autism had risen to one in every 110 births in the United States and almost one in 70 boys. The news was not a surprise to the Autism Society or to the 1.5 million Americans living with the effects of autism spectrum disorder. Nonetheless, the spotlight shown on autism as a result of the prevalence increase opened opportunities for the nation to consider how to serve these families facing a lifetime of supports for their children.

The Autism Society estimates the lifetime cost of caring for a child with autism ranges from $3.5 million to $5 million, and the U.S. is facing almost $90 billion annually in autism costs (including research, insurance costs and non-covered expenses, Medicaid waivers for autism, educational spending, housing, transportation, employment, and related therapeutic services and caregiver costs).

Leff doesn’t think horse therapy is the most cost-effective form of therapy, but the cost of non-horse therapy is comparable to horse therapy, especially when you’re paying for a horse, instructor, horse care and overhead, she said. “But I think that it’s an expensive sport and that is the problem with it and I don’t know any way we’re going to get that included in the health bill.”

On the other hand, Murphy and Avjian believe the field of horse therapy is becoming more widely accepted by scientific communities. According to Murphy, the DSM is recognizing sensory processing, which leaves insurance companies no choice to to pay for services. In turn, a wide variety of therapy, including equine, that has not been presently accepted will become available.

According to Murphy, the pricetag for an hour of equine therapy in D.C. is somewhere in the $120 to $130 range. Potomac Horse Center charges $61.50 for a 30-minute private lesson. Riders can buy a package of 10 or 12 lessons, which is cheaper at $58 per lesson coming to a total of $580 for 10 weeks.

“One thing that you find as a parent is if your child needs something, you will do anything to try to help your child,” Avjian said. “If they’re hurting, in pain—if you think there’s something that could improve their quality of life and functioning, you are going to do it.”

Getting second mortgages on homes and borrowing money from wherever and whomever are some examples she mentioned. Avjian has seen many parents making sacrifices, no matter the cost, to pay for therapeutic horseback riding. Research is lagging in showing the benefits and effectiveness of horse therapy, but that will change with time, she added.

The future of equine therapy

Today, according to Leff, the majority of those with disabilities seeking horse therapy are in the autistic spectrum. Horse therapy is just as important as playing a sport or doing physical activities—something everyone needs, she said. “For a person with a disability who can’t walk normally, to be able to ride a horse is like, for us, to be able to fly.”

She added that sport and therapy are inseparable.

According to Heller, a person’s background is irrelvant when it comes to equine therapy. “Horses speak to everybody and there is psychotherapy and physical therapy, and socialization and directionality, especially for people with disabilities,” she said. “Horses can really teach you a lot if you’re willing to listen.”

One downside to equine therapy is it’s very much of a man-powered therapy. “Unfortunately, we see less and less volunteerism happening. I’m hoping that will not prevail and people will still be willing to give to others,” Avjian said. “I know here in the D.C. area or in Montgomery County, the students have to put in a number of volunteer hours to graduate—I think that’s great.”

According to Avjian, research is an integral component where more work needs to be done and restrictions, such as time and money, have prevented equine therapy from being widely-accepted. “When we look at things now, especially because things are so expensive, you want to get ‘the most bang for your buck’ and I think this is just a wonderful way to have so many people have a positive impact in their life from social, emotional and therapeutic standpoints of physical and sensory therapy.”